Section

Question

Answer

Required all able-bodied white men aged eighteen to thirty-five to serve in the military for three years. Subsequent amendments raised the age limit to forty-five and then to fifty, and lowered it to seventeen.

conscription

Signed in 1862, it authorized the issue of $150 million of the so-called greenbacks

Legal Tender Act

Established criteria by which a bank could obtain a federal charter and issue national bank notes (notes backed by the federal government). It also gave private bankers an incentive to purchase war bonds.

National Bank Act

President of the Confederacy.

Jefferson Davis

A group of Republicans that included Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, and Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. The Radicals never formed a tightly knit unit; on some issues they cooperated with Lincoln. But they assailed him early in the war for failing to make emancipation a war goal and later for being too eager to readmit the conquered rebel states into the Union.

Radical Republicans

Called for the Union to blockade the southern coastline and to thrust, like a snake, down the Mississippi River.

Anaconda plan

The first major land battle in the Civil War. It was also known as First Manasas.

First Battle of Bull Run

Leader of the Confederacy army.

Robert E. Lee

First major battle on Northern soil.

Battle of Antietam

Leader of the Union army.

Ulysses S.Grant

A West Point graduate and Mexican-American war veteran who had most recently run a southern military academy. He lead the Union troops and captured Atlanta.

William T. Sherman

The bloodiest in American history to that date. It happened from April 6-7, 1862.

Battle of Shiloh

Southerners believed that they could use cotton to help them win the Civil War. Southern notions of embargoing cotton exports in order to bring the British to their knees failed. Planters conducted business as usual by raising cotton and trying to slip it through the blockade.

"cotton diplomacy"

Issued on January 1, 1863, it declared "forever free" all slaves in areas in rebellion.

Emancipation Proclamation

Created by Congress in March 1865, it had responsibility for the relief, education, and employment of former slaves.

Freedmen's Bureau

The greatest battle and the turning point of the Civil War.

Battle of Gettysburg

A strategic victory in the West. It gave the Union the control of the Mississippi River.

Battle of Vicksburg

Passed in 1862, embodied the Republican party's ideal of "free soil, free labor, free men" by granting 160 acres of public land to settlers after five years of residence on the land.

Homestead Act

Gave to the states proceeds of public lands to fund the establishment of universities emphasizing "such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and mechanic arts." The Morrill Act spurred the growth of large state universities, mainly in the Midwest and West. Michigan State, Iowa State, and Purdue universities, among many others, profited from the law.

Morrill Land Grant Act

Enraged by the first drawing of names under the Enrollment Act and by a longshoremen's strike in which blacks had been used as strikebreakers, mobs of Irish working-class men and women roamed the streets for four days until suppressed by federal troops.

New York City draft riots

An organization that raised funds at "sanitary fairs," bought and distributed supplies, ran special kitchens to supplement army rations, tracked down the missing, and inspected army camps.

United States Sanitary Commission

An organization that called for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, but it was used to promote woman suffrage as well.

Woman's National Loyal League

The Constitutional amendment that abolished slavery. It was passed by Congress in 1865.